McMurry audience celebrates entrepreneurship week by making a local connection.

That was no small feat during a week when it started raining Sunday afternoon and hardly paused until Thursday morning, when the inaugural Women's Entrepreneurship Luncheon began at McMurry University. Those who attended Wednesday's Celebrate the Arts luncheon across town at Abilene Christian were not singing in the rain as they dashed and splashed their way to the Hunter Welcome Center.

"It has been raining 40 days and 40 nights," quipped Dr. Duncan Pelly, associate professor in McMurry's business department, before introducing three speakers.

McMurry's event was timed for Women's Entrepreneurship Week, which honors accomplishments to this point with hopes to inspire women toward future success.

We were told the week started in 2014 at Montclair State University in New Jersey and now is observed in some way in 45 states and more than 30 countries.

The collegiate setting here, of course, was perfect. McMurry has been led by the city's first female university president, Dr. Sandra Harper, for five years now.

One test she passed was correctly spelling "entrepreneur." (FYI, a woman named Maria Mariani in the early 1980s was key to getting spell-checking programs to the growing software market).

Six quick hitters

Thursday's event featured, of course, lunch, and three speakers: Denise Coulter, who with her husband, Tim, own Big Country Subway; Tammy Reese, owner of The Flipping Egg; and Missy Denard, who founded and directs New Beginnings, a transitional program for women who have been incarcerated.

Each of their stories is different, of course. But there were common themes that at least stuck with me, and hopefully the students in attendance:

► Running a business is hard work and, as Tammy said, takes someone who is committed 100 percent. And willing to work after everyone else goes home.

► Do your research. Why open a Moe's Southwest Grill in Lubbock after two already had failed? That was Tammy. Or, for Denise, knowing local regulations (parking) and plans (a median is going in) would've changed their Pine Street store project.

► Have a business plan and use small-business resources. If you ask, "What's that?" you may be in trouble. And if your plan simply is to make a lot of money, you still may be in for trouble.

► Don't go into business with the "bread guy;" however, partnering with the guy who answers prayers and is open 24/7 is recommended.

► You'll make mistakes. Sometimes, as Denise said, those will come with "five zeroes."

► Empower, trust and put your employees first. We were told that some of Missy's women have found jobs at Subway and the Flipping Egg, boosting their self-esteem above their wrongdoings. Denise and Tammy said that even when money was tight, their employees were paid before they were.

Denise dives in

Denise opened a Subway in Cross Plains in 1996. She chose Subway because as a customer, she liked seeing food prepared in front of her.

She had a plan to grow her sandwich empire to five stores in five years but didn't open her second store until 2001.

A lesson she imparted was to have backup capital because launching a business most often takes more money than planned. Oh, and if mom has free time and will work for free, "employ" her.

She had to take a second job (with the city of Dublin) to make ends meet for a few years but her business venture got going with good investments in Cisco and Clyde. Then came opening a Subway inside the new northeast Abilene Walmart Supercenter, during which the owner of four Subways in town came in as she was hanging wallpaper in the store to ask if she wanted to buy him out.

The Coulters are a success story but her hands went up and down as she graphed the ups and downs over the past 20-plus years in business.

Her funniest story was that opening and closing stores in Abilene each day did not allow time to drive home to Cross Plains for naps. So, she and Tim would go to movie matinees — picking a boring show, preferably — to sleep.

"We'd get in the back row and snooze," she said of their $6 investment in rest.

Missy, the mastermind

She was involved in women's prison ministry when she was struck by the number of "repeat customers."

So, she set about doing something on the outside to keep these women from going back inside.

With limited finances but fostered by prayer, she found houses and then apartments for women to give them a place to land and enter into a support system.

These women did not trust, nor did they have the skills to make it a world away from drugs and other bad stuff. They had to be taught and to buy into a better life, which eventually led Missy to charge them for rent to instill that responsibility.

A few years ago, she opened a resale shop at which women could learn how to work — to get to work on time, present themselves nicely, interact with customers and to operate the cash register with the trust all the money would be there at quitting time.

Over 8½ years, Missy said more than 600 women, sometimes with kids, have been served. There are victories, and failures. But the women who come back to her after making another bad choice are given a second chance.

"They leave with something they didn't have," she said. "They need someone to believe in them. They need to trust."

Currently, 38 women are in the program, including a woman who had been incarcerated for 23 years. She's now living in an apartment and fitting into the world.

Tammy's tale

Tammy is not the tallest person, which is why she did not speak at the podium. She would've disappeared behind it, she joked.

She is a hoot, and quite the one-woman success story.

As a teenager, she took a job at a restaurant to make money for a trip to New York City with a cousin. She envisioned cooking but was assigned painting shelves.

Little did she know that after 25 years as a computer programmer, including the B-1 simulators at Dyess Air Force that she called "big ol' video games," this single mom would own a restaurant and use those painting skills on its walls.

Along the way, she operated the Moe's that now is a Heff's burger joint in southwest Abilene. Her Moe's did well and she was asked to open another in Lubbock. That failed, and it brought down the store here. She thought a chain operation would be sweet after her opening The Flipping Egg. But suddenly, it was no Moe.

Her inspiration was a place called the Egg & I in Fort Collins, Colorado. When she asked the owner if she could franchise the restaurant in Texas, he said the bread guy had asked the same thing. She fell back on her education at ACU, where she learned to never go into business with someone you don't know.

So she didn't, and did The Flipping Egg her way. Her hours. Her recipes. Her design. Well, after seeing how it was done at the Dixie Pig, IHOP and Denny's.

She hinted that someday, she'll move her popular location (no parking).

Impressed? I am. Maybe we'll hear more great stories at next year's event.